Bill Pickett: The Native, Black Cowboy
Bill Pickett was the first Black cowboy inducted into the National Rodeo Hall of fame, and he joins other Native cowboys, including Jackson Sundown and Nat Love, in the Native legacy of the American rodeo.
In the mythology of the Wild West, the cowboy looms large as a figure of manifest destiny. Ironically, this identity that was meant to convey white supremacy over Native land has its roots in Mexican equestrian tradition of the Vaquero. Performers such as Vicente Oropeza and Jose Esquivel popularized the image of the Vaquero in the Wild West show, and many Black and Native performers went on to appear as cowboys.
Bill Pickett was perhaps the most famous of these.
The descendent of formerly enslaved and Cherokee or Choctaw ancestors, Bill Pickett was born in Williamson County, Texas in 1870. Pickett lived most of his life as a ranch-hand in Taylor, Texas. He famously popularized the specific cowboy performance of “bulldogging,” or wrestling a steer into submission by biting its nose or lip.
In 1905, Joe Miller of the 101 Ranch and the Miller 101 Ranch Wild West show saw Pickett perform his bulldogging act in Forth Worth, Texas, and invited him to tour with the show. Pickett and his brother Charlie quickly became famous, not only for their feats of bulldogging, but also for their unique status as Black cowboys. Less frequently acknowledged was Pickett’s Native ancestry - although, on occasion, Pickett claimed to be Comanche in order to compete in arenas that barred Black participants.